Bethesda’s new Starfield update, Free Lanes, massively overhauls the game with freeform space travel between planets at multiple levels of speed. Announced alongside a host of additions and a PS5 port, this is the most game-changing update the game has seen yet.
As Bethesda commits to multiple years of continued updates for Starfield while the bulk of developers work on The Elder Scrolls 6, updates to the game’s modding tools are also coming to the game in the near future.
While Starfield has technically always had an open universe, it just took many hours to fly from planet-to-planet, this update completely transforms space travel to be faster and more enjoyable. As we reported previously, this required reformatting most of the game’s existing content to work within the new open universe.
Speaking to FRVR at a roundtable interview, we asked if mod tools will be updated to allow modders to fill the space and create new events across the entire galaxy. Simply put, the answer is yes, but there’s currently no release date for those newly updated tools.
“One of the things we always want to support is our creators,” Starfield lead producer Tim Lamb told us. “So, yes, creators will have access to make sure that their existing content and any new content they want to make will work with the new Free Lanes update [and] systems”.
When Starfield released, the game only supported events within the orbit of planets, despite the fact that players could (very slowly) fly quite far away. Now, events can happen anywhere within the universe, and mods will now be able to take more advantage of the space between planets and even systems to fill out the universe with anything they desire. After all, the mod tools already supported the creation of entire planets.
Unfortunately, we don’t have any details on any other improvements coming to the Starfield modding kit. However, in other news, fans have discovered a way to bring custom animations to the game years after its launch. While fans knew how to create animations for prior games, Starfield’s newer engine made use of a third-party animation suite that couldn’t be included with the game’s mod kit.
While Starfield’s new update won’t be that game-changing for players who didn’t like the game’s use of procedural generation or the game’s story, Free Lanes is an amazing addition for people like me that enjoyed the RPG flaws and all. Whether or not modders will come back to create new content for them, however, is a different story.
